


You Mangy Thing

by SnailSnoo (fuzzyfire123)



Series: The Pretty Okay Team of Morally Dubious Intent [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Anger Management, Angry elf, Blind Character, Cat Friend, Cat-Elf Friendship, Character Study, Fantastic Racism, Friendship, Gen, Harassment, Homebrew World, Isolation, Malnutrition, Pre-Canon, Prison, Slurs, Wood Elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:39:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9679637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzyfire123/pseuds/SnailSnoo
Summary: As Thedas gets ready to spend the next five years alone in one of Stolverth's prisons, he meets a friend he did not expect.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rxelien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxelien/gifts).



> Hello there! I wrote this one for my friend who is a member of my dungeons and dragons campaign as a Valentine's Day gift.

Five years for mouthing off to a noble. How was Thedas supposed to know that human’s take insults that harshly? All he did was curse out the man’s mother.

Even though the mother did turn out to be the late Monarch’s late wife, but that’s not important because right now Thedas is stuck in a tiny cell for five years. Five years isn’t too long in Thedas’s mind, but that’s not the problem.

The problem is that he’s stuck in a gross cell that drips from the ceilings onto cold stone floors layered with moss. The hay and whatever else filled mattress against the wall is moldy and smells like a sloth demon and a worg gave birth to a disgusting baby which then decided to shit all over that mattress. Everything Thedas touches is slimy and squishy, and this whole place smells like dead fish and sweaty men. 

The absolute worst part of this whole situation is that he can hear the sweaty men, very loudly in fact.

Some of the men just grumble and grunt unpleasantly, while some of them talk in that annoying northeastern accent of Stolverth and say things that are even more annoying.

But the worst things that Thedas hears from them, is when they talk to him.

“Hey treeshagger!” One of the men in the cell next to him calls out and tries to stick his clammy hand through the bars to grab at Thedas. This time Thedas weakly whacks it away. Sometimes on the days where the guards withhold water, Thedas can’t even manage that.

Another man from Thedas’s other side laughs loudly, too loudly for Thedas to handle in his faint state, “What? Humans too fuddy for you, you elfy ponce?”

Thedas stands up angrily and storms over to the middle of the stone wall at the back of his cell, the most uncomfortable place to rest, but the hardest for the men to reach.

“Look men!” One of the humans calls out. “Dandelion eater’s playing hard to get.”

“Go piss up a rope!” Thedas yells back in their direction. Thedas doesn’t really care at this point about insulting them, he just wants them to shut up.

As the night draws on, Thedas tries to tune out the calls and whistles from the thieves, murderers, and what have you, but then at the crest of the night, when all was finally quiet, Thedas heard a sound.

Thedas hadn’t really heard a sound like this before in these cells, and it took him a second to realize that the sounds weren’t coming from a person.

The sounds were coming from a cat.

And the cat sounded as pissed as Thedas was. He could hear the cat trying to jump but falling down, as if trying to escape from these cells like Thedas wanted to.

“Hey you,” Thedas called out quietly. As he did, the noises stopped.

People used to ask Thedas if he could hear better since he’s blind. Now if they ask, Thedas just beats them, but when he was younger and less angry his answer would be ‘no, I’m just better at tracking noises.’

In this situation, especially considering how dark it must be this late, it’s pretty easy for him to hear the uneven pawsteps coming closer.

Thedas hears the cat rest outside his cell bars, flicking its tail agitatedly against the cobble stone.

“What?” Thedas asks as he leans back against his wall and faces in the general direction of the cat.

The cats gives a deep meow, that sounds plenty annoyed at something.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Thedas shrugs at the thing. “You have to find your own way out, I can’t help you. Maybe in three years.”

The cat responds with a low growlish meow, and Thedas then hears something pass through the bars of his cell.

“Sorry, I don’t do roommates,” Thedas grits outs to the cat who is now pacing the centre of the small cell.

The cat then sniffs around the cell room as its tail waves quickly through the air. The cats pads through the room on a mission, trying to identify everything within this gods awful cell.

“I know it's gross,” Thedas pulls his knees up against his chest so that his whole body is on the moldy mat. “I thought that too at first. You get used to it.”

The cat then finishes its sniffing mission by hesitantly sniffing the wood elf against the wall. Thedas doesn’t move as the cat brushes against him, sniffing out something on his person.

“What do you want?” Thedas whispers to the cat.

The cat stops its sniffing for a moment and then pushes itself flush to Thedas’s side. Thedas can feel it's matted and grimy fur and can even feel its ribs under that. The cat then lies down, against Thedas’s side and his warmth.

Thedas sits unmoving for a moment before reaching out a tentative hand to pat the cat’s head. The ears press down under the wood elf’s gentle and confused touch.

Thedas then withdraws his hand and sighs, “I guess I could share a cell.”

He hears the cat start to purr and smirks, “You get all the rats.”

* * *

 

Three years later, Thedas is pressed up against the wall avoiding the humans in the cells next to him as Rat prowls about the cell, meowing angrily. The day is like any other day.

Until everyone in the cells goes silent as they hear the clanking of metal armor coming down the stairs holding a crackling torch, “Which one of you is Thedas?”

Before Thedas could even open his mouth, all of the men start shouting that they themselves are Thedas, in a desperate attempt to get out. The clanking armor gets closer to Thedas’s own cell and Rat hisses before bolting back over to the ragged wood elf.

“I heard he was an elf,” The torch comes through the bars of Thedas’s cell, maybe lighting the armored man’s view. “None of those other buggers are, so it must be you.”

Thedas doesn’t even say anything as the man unlocks the cell door and proceeds to cast a Hold Person spell on the wood elf.

The man then clunks over to Thedas and leans down closing Thedas’s wrists in manacles, “It’s your lucky day, pixie.”

The man dispels the spell and drags Thedas after him. Thedas resists for a second, for bitterness sake, but goes along after a few moments.

The man drags him up a stairway for a couple of steps before Thedas’s stomach drops and he turns back, listening for Rat. As Thedas follows the man, he whispers the cat’s name over and over as they go up the stairs, trying to call him but not give the men the pleasure of seeing him perturbed.

The armored man is now on flat land, and Thedas has two more steps to go before he hears a very faint trail of paws flush against a few walls. The clanking had drowned out the small creature’s faint padding, especially since the cat was being so stealthy in response to Thedas’s fear.

“Don’t worry, Rat,” Thedas whisper barely over a breath to the cat stalking after him. “We’re almost out.”

After a few minutes, the man stops Thedas by a large door and pulls at the chain to get Thedas to lift his wrists. The human roughly shoves the key in the lock, setting the wood elf free and then proceeds to push Thedas out the door. Thedas falls down five steps and lands bruised outside of the city guard’s stronghold.

Thedas jumps up to retort, but he hears the doors slam shut before he can. He fumes for a few moments before realizing that he can’t hear his feline friend over the hubbub of the open streets.

“Rat?” Theda’s calls more loudly that he should, with a long drawn out ‘a,’ hoping his friend might return.

He calls multiple times before he feels something brush against his leg with a familiar rumble.

Thedas smiles and kneels down, stroking the cat gently, “Thanks buddy.”

Rat bumps Thedas’s hand with his head one more time, and then leaves going off somewhere, hopefully somewhere better.

“Good luck you mangy thing,” Thedas grumbles before heading off into the masses of people.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it, and I'd love constructive criticism.  
> Please use kudos and post comments! c:  
> Note:  
> Credit to Dungeons and Dragons, Dragon Age, and Wizards of the coast.


End file.
